


paradigm shift

by gemstonedragons



Series: get back up if you go down [3]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Male Sidestep - Freeform, Not Canon Compliant, post-heartbreak incident, pre-Fallen Hero: Rebirth, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:47:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23989123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemstonedragons/pseuds/gemstonedragons
Summary: Sometimes, the people you lose aren't the people you thought you knew.
Series: get back up if you go down [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721770
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	paradigm shift

They go to clean out his old apartment, after the funeral, after everything and-- 

Jules is gone, and Ricardo is standing at his door, because it's time- its time to clean out his place, because there's no one else, Jules doesn't-- didn't-- have anyone else, so Ortega has to do it. 

The apartment had been small- cramped, and cheap, and Ricardo had had to keep himself from thinking about the number of locks on the door, and what that could have meant.

( _He remembers teasing Jules about all the keys on his keychain, how he jingled when he walked if he wasn't trying to be sneaky._ )

Chen comes with- as moral support maybe, but maybe he's not as put-together about everything as he comes off as. Ricardo doesn't know. He feels numb, mostly, and that's the only reason he's able to be here at all. 

Ric stands in the living room of the dinky little place and just- _looks._

Jules's place is - just empty. Bland. It looks like a movie set. Like someone else's idea of what a young man's apartment should look like. (Battered second- third- fourth-hand furniture, mismatched sneakers scattered by the door, junk mail piled high on the rickety little folding table in the kitchen, more ratty sweaters and jackets than anyone living in Los Diablos should really own.)

Nothing about it makes him think someone actually _lived_ here. There are no photos, no art, no house plants, nothing that couldn't be replaced. Its-- difficult. Ricardo doesn't know what he was expecting. Hoping that Jules would come stomping out of his bedroom, cranky and tired, bruised and battered, maybe, but not-- not gone -- not dead. Hoping that they'd find him alive, and pissed, maybe, that they were invading his space. But if not any of that, then, Ricardo was hoping to find something- anything- to remember him by. Jules' didn't leave tracks, like other people. Didn't forget a coat on your couch, or loan you an umbrella. He didn't leave behind things that had sentimental meaning. Ortega doesn't know if Jules _had_ anything that held sentimental meaning. 

There's only so many memories that you can physically save when he wouldn't take photographs, and didn't allow himself to like anything.

But as they move through the rooms- they find little things. A stack of DVDs, old musicals and old cowboy movies, the ones that Jules secretly loved. A cheap plastic chess set, the one he used to tuck in his coat to sneak into HQ, or on missions, ready to go whenever the team had downtime. A cheesy little charm bracelet with a busted clasp from Themmy, decorated with bootleg copies of the Rangers logos.

They find the bracelet in Jules' bedroom, next to the bed- the sad mattress directly on the floor, no box spring, no bed frame. (It's not an air mattress, at least.) There’s clothing on the hangers in the closet, which is almost a surprise, except- none of it’s stuff he’s ever seen Jules wear. (Jules, who wore workout gear when he wasn’t in his skinsuit, who tucked his tshirts into his sweats like an old man, who wore layers and layers of clothes, even when it was edging into the nineties and everyone else was in shorts and tank tops.) Ricardo is distracted by that- and that's when Wei spots the backpack. A go-bag, with everything you’d need to run away, if you only had a minute or two of warning. Wei just stares at it. And- Ricardo wonders if- if Wei was right, about Jules- that Wei was right that Jules was more than a little suspicious. He starts to speak- to say something- but-- _what can you say?_

Chen walks away, leaving him to sit there in Jules' bedroom. Ortega doesn't know how long the other man is gone, just - _static_ \- and then Chen is back, and he holds out a cup of coffee- has he been gone that long?

"It's instant. Ju- he didn't have anything else." 

Wei's hands don't shake- won't shake. But he moves even more deliberately than usual- like he's- like he's thinking every movement through _twice_ before he even twitches a muscle. Ricardo takes the mug, and follows him back into the kitchen, away from the go-bag, away from the weirdness of Jules' closet.

After they leave, that afternoon, they don't talk about any of it, but here's a secret.

Ortega knows that Chen keeps a chess set in his desk. It's a travel set, the kind that folds in half to create a case, the squares of the board on the back. It's not special, or elaborate. It's the sort of cheap plastic junk you can find in any highway-side gas station, stocked in between the sudoku books and the candy display. 

The second secret is that Chen used to play chess with Jules, back in the old days, and that for all Jules' insubordination, they did occasionally get along. They used to tally their wins up on post-it notes, on napkins, on receipts. (Sometimes, on the chess set itself, with silver sharpie.)

The third secret is that the chess set is Jules'-- was Jules'. And Jules didn't leave tracks, or traces in your life. He was sneaky, and secretive, and- and maybe Ricardo didn't know him as well as he thought he did.

But- the chess set, that was one thing. That was something that made him real, was proof that he had existed in their lives. 

Chen gets the chess set, silver sharpie lines and all, and that's the last they speak of it.

**Author's Note:**

> this little fic has gone thru so many versions, but I think this one is my favorite- all my FH fics live in the same google doc, so they all exist in the same 'verse, but the timelines are wonky. they get posted when my adhd brain says it's time.


End file.
